The difference between left and right coincidentally is also the difference between humans and animals. Witness different gender roles among lions: the male sleeps for 20 hours a day and then eats his children when he's too lazy to hunt. Notice how the most intelligent animals are also the ones that have the least self-interest - elephants form a "welfare state" by taking care of their injured, while guppies make sure that their children are "rugged individuals" by eating any offspring that aren't quick to "pull themselves up with their bootstraps".
Different views from left and right
On the right there's the stages of economic and political development (Russet, Alker et alia pp 294-298) which divides countries into five stages, based on GNP per capita (on average, not how it's actually distributed), percentage of urban population, amount of radios, etc:
It is based on averages, and has no measure of the freedom, justice, or psychological soundness of the actual citizens of each country.
When one looks at the countries, it brings the assumption that eventually all can become high mass-consumption. However, that would be impossible in capitalism, like an army made entirely of generals, or a football team with only quarterbacks, or an orchestra of conductors. Capitalism often suffers from a merit glut - for example, students often graduate from university and find they can only get jobs flipping burgers. In a system of labour and capital, we can't all take the role of capital. No matter how much merit you have, you'll still end up scrubbing toilets if you're in second place.
The left, represented by the Marxist model, goes like this:
The difference
Notice that while the right looks at how much stuff people have, the left looks at politics. Nazi Germany, which the left would describe as feudal if not primitive, would still be considered at the top of civilization by the right. While not all countries can become administrative high mass consumption societies, all could become utopian - in fact, they would probably all *have* to for it to work.
My view is that the measure of civilization is only at its weakest point. If was going to judge how civilized Rome was, I wouldn't go to the Caesars as the history books do, I would go to the slums, and the slave markets.
For a good look at what civilization could be, I suggest a trip to Fiji. It doesn't have many radios, glass towers, or fancy fountains. What it does have is a society in which even the police don't have guns, and where children are the most important thing - in fact, childhood is considered the most important part of life. Yet a century and a half ago intertribal warfare and cannibalism was so rampant that Britain was actually invited to take power. Yet by the right's definition, Fiji is no more civilized today than during the worst of dark ages. We could learn a lot from Fiji's society - and a lot from the leftist view of the advance of civilization.